


Ask The Right Question

by Catchclaw



Category: Star Trek RPF, Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Angst, Arguments, First Time, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Homophobia, Love Confessions, M/M, Press and Tabloids, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-28
Updated: 2017-05-28
Packaged: 2018-11-06 01:31:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,068
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11025783
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Catchclaw/pseuds/Catchclaw
Summary: Being in love with Zach is one thing. Not being able to tell anyone is something else.





	Ask The Right Question

“So,” the reporter says, a pretty redhead with an Italian accent, “are you dating?”

It's a general question, or it's supposed to be, but Chris only figures that out after he's started fumbling through an answer. He’s been in this damn chair for hours, perched beside Zach in a windowless room, and no matter how plushy the carpet, no matter how swish the sparkling water, his brain’s starting to feel claustrophobic. God, press tours are hell. 

"No!” he says, “I mean, um, I can see why people might think that, but we’re just—"

Zach cuts him off at the corner of _don’t go there_ and _shut the hell up_. "I'm not seeing anyone," he says, breezy, with that poet-in-the-back-row flip that Chris can’t imitate. "And neither are you, right? Last I heard." He gives Chris a look, Spock sharp, and oh, right, that's his cue.

"Yeah, no. You know, not right now." Chris shrugs, digs up a smile, hands it over to the camera, wry. "With our—my—schedule these days, it's almost impossible."

"Impossible!" Zach says, later, when they're back in the suite, 10 floors and a world away from the presumptive heteronormative bullshit. "That's what you are, asshole. Jesus, how many times did we practice?"

Chris tugs his button-down off, gets tangled in his t-shirt. "Hey, it's been a long day! And the subject of her sentence could easily have been construed as both singular and or plural. Not my fault her question wasn’t precise.”

Zach's got his arms crossed and he's scowling, but it's all performative; Chris can see the light in his eyes, the one that says shower and then sex and then dinner—oooh, maybe room service, if Chris asks real real nice. "Her grammar wasn't ideal, true, but you can't blame it all on that." His mouth lifts. "You've got a guilty conscience where it comes to me, Pine."

"Do I?"

"Mmmmm." A hand on his cheek, another on his belt, snagged on his fly. "That, or the thought of me makes you especially loose-tongued."

"I'll show you loose-tongued," Chris says, because it's dumb and kind of cheesy but there's some truth in it, too: he wants to tell every goddamn person on the planet—all the ones with TV cameras, anyway—how he feels about Zach, about this crazy good thing they're building together. But he can't, because Zach would kill him. "Not good for your career," leading man blah blah blah. It's bullshit, except Chris knows it isn't.

Zach rolls his eyes, epic, but he's chuckling when Chris kisses him and his hands are warm and sure. They go tight when he sucks on Chris' tongue, tugs out the sounds Chris has been aching to make all damn day, trapped under hot stand lights and a parade of foreign press.

"Shower," Zach says when Chris pulls at his blazer, yanks his shirt from his pants and catches his nails on Zach's skin, the curve of his back. "Go hose yourself off and then we can play."

"Come with me and it'll go faster."

"No," Zach says, "it won't," but his jacket's on the floor and his hands are in Chris' pants as he tows Chris into the bathroom, so yeah, Chris figures, as he kicks out of his jeans, as Zach goes vampire on his neck, maybe his mistake’s been forgotten.  
  


____________________

 

It wasn’t planned, was the thing. 

Ok, these things rarely are, true, but he and Zach the first time had been especially spontaneous and not at all well-considered and dear god, beautifully hot.

They’d been running lines—" _Such_ a cliché,” Zach would tsk later—a few weeks into production after some last-minute script changes that JJ was over the moon about; but then, he didn’t have to commit the genius words to memory in less than a night.

“I mean, they’re not terrible,” Zach had said, frowning at the tiny type. “Kirk is being incredibly recalcitrant here.”

Chris raises an eyebrow. “Kirk is? Dude, Spock’s about to kick him off the damn ship. If that’s how he acts when he’s in charge, I’d say Kirk has every right to be recalcitrant, at least, if not out-and-out insubordinate.”

They’re settled on the tiny sofa in Chris’ trailer, Zach with his legs folded like a Zen master and Chris perched on the arm. They should be on the way back to the hotel because it’s fucking late and Chris, at least, is beat. It’s hard to tell if Zach is; when he’s not in character, his expression always has this serene, controlled shine. Chris doesn’t know if that’s his real face or not. They haven’t known each other long enough yet. This is the closest he’s come to seeing what he thinks must be Zach relaxed—his shoes on the floor, his hair sliding free of its gel, his eyes a lot softer than Spock’s.

Speaking of, they’re on his face now, said eyes, buzzing brown. “You have to admit,” Zach says, “it’s a hell of a way to win an argument.”

“Is that what this is, in your mind? An argument?”

“In my mind, yes. I’m not sure Spock would see it as such.”

“Or admit to that, anyway.”

That gets him a smile. “Touché.” Zach reaches for the pen Chris is twirling but not using and plucks it free, scribbles something imperceptible and probably brilliant on the page. “Do you think it’s an argument?”

“Me? No, I think it’s a question of being right. Kirk knows he is, knows Spock isn’t, so that’s it. There shouldn’t even be a discussion, as far as Kirk is concerned.”

Zach yawns, one of those full-body productions that makes Chris feel fucking guilty for calling this meeting, for dragging Zach from the van line and into his trailer, onto his couch. “That would seem to be the definition of an argument to me,” Zach says.

Chris shakes his head. “No, see, it’d be like ‘arguing’ about gravity. It is a thing. It exists. To deny that it does doesn’t invite discussion. It just makes you wrong.”

“Hmmm,” Zach says, which is the least articulate thing Chris has heard come out of his mouth in two weeks of shooting.

“Hmmm? What does that mean?”

There’s a tug on his ankle, a brush of nails on his skin, and Zach’s smiling at him, his head pitched back on the cushions. “It means, come down here and sit like a human instead of a parrot. You’re making me nervous, Pine.”

Chris moves, slides off the arm and Zach shifts, makes room for him in the soft but short hollow of the couch. “Nervous? Why?

“Because I have this image of you tipping back off this thing and breaking your face and then where the fuck would we be, come all this way on the movie and now we have no star.”

The tips of Zach’s eyebrows are smeared and he needs to shave and he smells like cold cream and that Italian cologne he bathes in and his hand is on Chris again, his knuckles grazing the edge of Chris’ thigh. Chris leans into it, into Zach, a long line of connection from shoulder to knee. 

“Is that how you see it?” Chris says. “I’m the star and you’d be lost without me?” 

“Hardly. But the Powers That Be seem to, and they’d be furious with me for tarnishing your shine.”

“Hey, there’s no shine here left for you to tarnish, believe me.”

They look at each other and there’s a moment where the air feels too heavy, when the world boils down to Zach easing Chris’ glasses from his face, to Chris chucking his script at the floor, to their hands finding each other, intertwining, both of them holding too tight.

“Are you sure?” Zach says, and the tension in his voice, the cobra coils of want, wind Chris up hard.

“Yeah. Are you?” 

Zach’s eyes are like echoes, everything Chris is feeling handed back to him, brighter, and when he touches Chris’ jaw, draws a thumb over his mouth, Chris can hear his answer, loud and clear.

He hauls Chris in his lap and they make out like teenagers, big gangly ones who are way too big for the couch. There are limbs everywhere and not enough room and Chris is laughing when he comes, his face pressed into Zach’s neck as he spunks up what Zach claims is his favorite shirt.

“Well, yeah,” Chris says, reaching for Zach’s deliciously strained fly, “it is now." 

Zach snorts and smacks Chris’ ass, fucks eager into his fist. “Egocentric dipshit.”

“Egocentric dipshit who’s gonna get you off, you mean.”

“Point taken.”

Chris licks into his mouth. “Not yet,” he says. “But you should definitely take me home after this and try.”

Zach makes a sound like he’s swallowed a dragon and he gets a hand in Chris’ hair, pulls hard till it hurts. “Try? You don’t think I can make you take it?”

“Is that what you want?” Chris hums. “To make me? You want to hold me down and give me this, huh? You want to fuck me, Zachary?”

“I hate you,” Zach says, but he’s shooting like a pent-up firehose and beating tattoos on Chris’ back, so for once his words are a moot point.

They don’t fuck that night, or the next, but when he does get Chris naked and incoherent just from the tips of his fingers, his tongue, he makes Chris pay for those words, every one.

 

____________________

 

On the set, they can hide it: Kirk’s sleeves conceal Chris’ bruises, Spock’s mask cover Zach’s grin, and if anybody else notices, they let sleeping co-stars lie. Except for Karl, of course. 

He ambushes Chris in makeup one morning, early, shuts the door to keep the professionals out and plops down in the seat beside him, pulls a great face in the mirror.

“You and Zach,” Karl says, his accent as thick as Chris’ head feels. “How long’s that been going on?”

Chris can watch his cheeks turn red in real time. “Um—? For a while?”

“Uh huh.” He gives up an eyebrow. “And this is a good thing, yes? Everyone’s happy?”

“Yes,” Chris says. “I mean, wait. Why?” His inner Fox Mulder kicks in, startled awake by the question. “Why are you asking? Does it not seem good? Do I look unhappy? Do we?”

Karl laughs, the big booming one that shakes the walls of the trailer. “No, you’re both beaming like noontime. It’s good.”

“Yeah?”

A big Kiwi paw on his shoulder. A squeeze. “Have you seen the dailies lately, kiddo? It’s definitely good.”

Chris repeats this to Zach later, much, when they’re supposed to be sleeping. 

“He said what?” Zach sits up, reaches for the nightstand, blinds Chris with a snap of the lamp. “Christopher, be precise in your recollection, please. What exactly did Karl say?”

They’re in Zach’s hotel room and even though it’s identical to Chris’ in theory, in practice it feels like a wholly new space, one whose every edge seems arranged to say _Zach_. There’s a copy of _Woyzeck_ on the coffee table. A big dark scarf draped over the TV. A row of glass Evian bottles lined up on the bar, each of the labels facing just so, and in the dark, to Chris, it feels pleasantly like outer space.  

But the light is too much out of nowhere and Chris groans, slides his head under the sheets. “That we look good together in the dailies. That’s all.”

“And it was from that he gleaned that we were—?”

“Together? I don’t know. I guess so. I didn’t press him for fucking details, Zach.”

He can hear Zach’s disapproval, a living thing in all of that quiet, and then Zach’s peeling back the blanket, staring down at him with what feels like real sad.

“We need to be more careful,” Zach says, finally.

“About what?”

Zach doesn’t answer, just leans down and feeds him a soft, heavy kiss, the weight of the world on his lips. “Trust me,” he says, one hand spreading over Chris’ heart. “I know whereof I speak.”

Chris strokes his neck, uncertain of everything for a second except this, except the sound of Zach’s breathing, the warm flex of his fingers. “Kiss me,” he says. “And we’ll talk about it in the morning, all right?”

A smile, a little run rabbit run, and Zach sends it over his cheek, buries it under Chris’ jaw. “All right.”

But they don’t.

Instead, Zach starts edging away from Chris slowly, a Pangea-like creep that takes him fucking days to finally notice.

He stops coming to Chris’ trailer between set-ups for coffee and sweet, unstable kisses that can’t go very far once they’re in makeup. He stops making Chris laugh during takes, stops doing his damndest to make Chris break with an eyebrow or a bon mot that’s completely out of line with his Spock-shaped facade. He stops standing too close and looking too long and starts hoarding them up, all his touches, all that want, and saves it for the few hours they get to call night.

“Shit,” he groans, biting the back of Chris’ neck as he fucks into him, hard, unrelenting. “I’ve wanted to be inside you all goddamn day.”

At first it’s hot, the way he starts mauling Chris the second they’re finally alone, the way he holds himself at bay in the day and pummels Chris with his affection at night. Except they don’t kiss, they don’t play, they don’t laugh like they used to. He still has bruises to hide but Zach’s smile is long gone and it stops feeling like affection when they’re together, it stops feeling good, it starts to feel like Zach’s just using him for sex, as a way to get his rocks off after 16 hours of shooting and that, that is not what Chris signed up for and it’s sure as fuck not what he wants. 

One night, they’re two steps into Chris’ room, deadbeat on their feet, both of them, when Zach slams him against the wall and reaches for his fly and Chris is just—done.

“Stop!” he says, his hand finding Zach’s wrist. “Hey. Quit it.”

Zach stills, every part of him but his eyes. “What is it?”

“What the hell is going on, huh?”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

Chris palms his cheek, his two AM stubble. “Bullshit. Yeah, you do.”

Zach looks away, lifts away, folds his arms like Chris is a third rail he can’t bear to touch. “I’m sorry,” he says, brittle, “I seem to have misunderstood. I thought you wanted”—a weird gesture, as if Zach’s hands are foreign birds he can’t control—"this. I guess you don’t.”

“What is ‘this’?” Chris says, on edge.

Zach pulls himself up, reaches for his highest level of haughty. “Sex, Christopher,” he says, biting off each word precise. “I thought you were in the mood to fuck. Forgive me for reading the situation so poorly.”

“Wait, is that what we are now? Fuck buddies?”

“Don’t be crass.”

“Oh, please, professor, enlighten me as to your preferred verbiage. Because clearly what we should be doing is arguing semantics.”

Zach is trying so hard to keep his shit together that his face is like rubber, bouncing from one expression to the next, never settling. “And here I thought you liked taking my cock,” he says. “Silly me. I must have misunderstood what you meant when you said _fuck me harder_. And I must have imagined all the spunk you’ve spilled in my presence, all over my goddamn sheets. That was all a fever dream, I suppose.”

“Who are you?” Chris says, and it surprises him how much he means it. This isn’t the Zach he thought he was sleeping with, the one that he was pretty certain he was falling for. “Where is this coming from? Honestly.” His voice cracks a little, hurt breaking through anger, confusion, and he can see it touch Zach, a rock cracking a window. “Jesus, I care about you. All of you, not just your dick. Don’t you know that?”

“Chris,” Zach says, like he doesn’t trust himself. “You don’t understand.”                                 

“You’re damn right I don’t. Explain it to me.”

There’s more Kirk in his voice than there should be, but maybe that’s what gets Zach’s mouth moving. There’s a little Spock left in him, too.

“It’s your career,” he says. “You can’t be with me and have the life you’re supposed to have, the one the Hollywood gods are going to lay out for you, after this. Lay at your feet, practically.”

“What does that have to do with—?”

Zach laughs, this hoarse, awful thing that makes Chris want to hug him, to hold on to him and cast out whatever bad shit put that sound there. “That you even ask that question, that the connection between you and me and us and what the world is going to make of you isn’t apparent, that you can’t see the kinds of parts they’re going to be dropping in your lap after this movie comes out, baby—that’s the problem, right there.”

“Wait,” Chris says. “Being with you is gonna hurt my career? Is that what you’re saying?”

“No, it’s what I’m stating as fact. You can’t be a fag and a hetero romantic dream.”

Chris pulls a face. “Pretty sure a good 90% of romantic male leads back in the day were gay, Zach. Rock Hudson. Cary Grant?”

That sound again, but this time Zach comes towards him, catches Chris’ face in his hands. “Because they were buried so deep in the closet that even the moths couldn’t find them. And, anyway, Cary Grant was bi.”

He snorts, winds his arms around Zach’s waist and Zach’s eyes fold, a pair of jacks, a flush. “Who I choose to date is nobody’s goddamn business.”

“Of course it is,” Zach says, gentle. “That’s exactly what it is. It’s a business. And I won’t let you mess it up, all the good shit that you’re holding, just because you like it when I fuck you.”

“I’ve never said that I’m straight.”

“Be that as it may, you’ve certainly acted that way, and thus everybody’s read you as such.” Zach’s looking at him again, his eyes dark and serious. “It gives you a kind of privilege that it’s foolish for you to take for granted.”

“You’re gay,” Chris says, “and I don’t see you out on the street.”

Zach’s mouth turns. “I’m nobody’s idea of a romantic lead, Christopher.”

“Bullshit,” Chris says. “You’re mine.”

Zach makes a tiny, hurt noise that makes Chris’ knees weak. “You can’t say things like that.”

“I mean it.”

Zach’s lips brush his. “I know,” he says. “That’s what makes me scared for you.”

For a moment, Chris feels like he should apologize—for what, he isn’t sure—but then Zach’s tongue is over his, fervent, and it’s forgotten.

They fuck on top of the covers, Chris’ heels slipping on the comforter as Zach drives into him, their palms flush, their hands stretched above Chris’ head.

“Oh, baby,” Zach murmurs. “You’re so pretty when you want to come.”

“Please,” Chris says again, straining against Zach’s weight, his grip, just to feel Zach push back and hold him down. “Please let me come.”

Zach kisses his mouth, lush, his neck. “Be still and maybe I will, after I’m done with you.”

It’s good like this, Chris thinks as Zach comes with a deep, hungry shudder. It’s better, he knows as he kisses Zach through the aftershocks, lightning strikes in the desert. It feels like them again.

When Zach pulls out, he pins Chris’ hips to the bed and stares between them, shaking his head. Says: “Look what you made me do. My, my. I made such a mess of your sweet little hole.” He turns his eyes up and grins, wicked. “Play with yourself while I lick it up.”

A dozen strokes of Zach’s tongue, of his own sweaty hand, and he’s gone, his words are, and god, it’s good like this, it’s better, it feels like them again.

“I love you,” he says, later, Zach wound around his back as the sun pushes at the curtains, day shoving its way past the night.

A sigh, this warm sink of sound that melts into his skin, tumbles into his gut. “God help you, Christopher,” Zach says. “I love you, too.”

 

____________________

 

  
So they don’t break up or hide their light under a bushel after that, but they do agree to be careful.

Chris may be a Pollyanna-eyed fool when it comes to love but he has to admit that Zach is right about the business: once you’ve been assigned a lane, you sure as shit better stay there until you know for sure you can pass the guy on your right.

He’s a leading man of the romance maybe action variety, based on the scripts that his agent is getting? Then fine. That’s the role of Chris Pine, for now. He’s willing to play it. 

After _Trek_ wraps, it’s a little easier, because he and Zach are in different cities, different continents, sometimes, and there’s nothing for anybody to see, much less misinterpret.

There are phone calls, though, embarrassingly long ones that remind Chris of middle school, of sneaking into the kitchen after midnight and calling Stephanie who lived three streets over and talking about bullshit nothing until two in the morning. She would talk, mostly, and he would listen, but he was good at that, hearing people, letting them talk, and he’d loved the sound of her voice: breathless and wound up from the bad of it, being awake so late, until sleep swam up her vowels and swallowed her consonants whole.

Except with Zach, they both talk a lot, throw out a flurry of words to try and stitch up the distance. Zach sends him a copy of the play he’s in and they read through it, dissect it, argue over its meaning. Chris loves the language, the dynamic collision of words and punctuation on the page, but Zach’s entranced by motivation and tactics and the way his character uses discourse to evade everybody and everything. He tells Zach stories about his new co-stars, the lighting guy who quotes Adrienne Rich, the Thai place he stops by every night. And there’s phone sex sometimes, yeah, but Chris finds it more frustrating than hot; it just underscores how alone he is, how very much Zach isn’t beside him, and more than once he hangs up with his hand sticky and his face wet, the bed too goddamn cold beside him.

He gets random cards in the mail, the most inappropriate that Zach can find— _Happy Quinceanera!_ and aggressively butch Father’s Day cards covered in stags and plaid and a _Welcome Home, Patriot_ one with a saluting dog that makes him laugh for a week. He sends back books and half-finished poems, a nice pen, his favorite lighter the week he tries to quit smoking.

It doesn’t take.

By the time they collide in LA, a few days before the big bad _Star Trek_ press tour, it’s been almost four months since they’ve seen each other and it takes Chris a moment to get it, that Zach is really on his doorstep, squinting at him through $300 sunglasses and wearing a black t-shirt just this side of indecent.

He wants to say something clever or at least coherent but Zach steps right in, shuts the door, and it’s not until they’re kissing, careful, relearning each other’s mouths, that Chris realizes he’s shaking.

“It’s been a long time,” he says, his fingers turning under the black and easing over Zach’s ribs. “I wasn’t sure if—I didn’t know what to expect.”

Zach’s hands are cupped over his shoulders, stroking the long line of his spine. “I love you,” he says, his voice like Chris’ body feels, too tight, too much, like all his skin cells are singing. “You can be goddamn fucking sure about that.”

He’s tender that night, laying Chris out and touching every part of him, trailing gentle marks all over his back, the swell of his ass, the underside of his arms, his calves, and then he falls back in the bed, pulls Chris on top of him, and opens him up like that, his eyes caught on Chris’ face.

“It’s ok,” Zach murmurs as Chris fucks back on his fingers. Chris’ breath is coming in sharp little punches and his dick is high and heavy already. “You can come like this, baby. I’m going to fuck you anyway.”

Chris palms his cock, gasping, and Zach’s fingers retreat which is awful but then he’s full again, full, filled up to the brim, and he comes so hard the world is white and Zach’s fucking him, hard, holding him up so he can take that beautiful cock and Zach’s crooning at him, a tuneless song of _look at you, look at you_ and _baby oh fuck my love fuck._

They fall asleep without cleaning up and he wakes up wet again,  Zach easing his cock back inside. They’re on their sides and Zach is pressed to his back, breathing hurricanes in his ear, half-asleep, not talking. Chris draws his leg up, lets Zach push in deeper before his eyes have even opened, and then they’re fucking in earnest, trying to kiss over Chris’ shoulder as he jerks his cock in time with Zach’s hips and when Zach comes, he bites Chris’ neck and groans, a bone deep guttural sound, and that’s what sets Chris off, the feel of that sound on his skin.

“Missed you,” he whispers while Zach is still shivering inside of him. “Oh, fuck, I missed you.”

“We need a strategy,” Zach says in the kitchen later, much, when they’ve strayed from the bed, stumbled into the shower, taken refuge in Chris' kitchen.

“For what?” Chris says, poking carefully at the eggs.

“For the upcoming media orgy.”

Chris peeks at the underside of one omelet, sees only pale. “Hon, I’m fucked out and only 65 percent conscious, so you’re gonna have to spell it out for me in capital letter neon, all right?”

There’s a sound of a cork, the sigh of wine into a glass. “You know how these things are,” Zach says after a swallow. “Some reporter’s going to ask it. Probably more than one. Some version of”—his voice pitches pointed—"Tell us, who are you seeing now, Chris? Are you dating anyone new, Mr. Pine? What about that blonde/brunette/ginger you were photographed with five years ago? Are you two still fucking?’”

Chris laughs, because he’s tired and everything’s funny. “Ok, ok. I get it. So we need a strategy for dissembling, is that it?”

Zach steps in behind him, watches Chris flip one omelet, then the other. Perfect protein symmetry. “Yes. Exactly.”

“Why no,” Chris says into the handle of the spatula, in his _I’m friendly because I have to be_ voice. “I’m not dating anybody right now. But thank you for asking.”

“Good,” Zach says. “A fine base. Then toss in your modifier/explanation of choice, like: It’s difficult with my work schedule. All that travel. No place to call home. Hard to date when you don’t have a permanent address." 

“But I do have a permanent address.”

“Ok, well. Lois Lane and Jimmy Olsen aren’t going to know that, are they?”

Chris nudges him back and reaches for their plates, lifts the pan from the stove. “Good point." 

“Wait,” he says five minutes later around a mouthful of egg, “what if they ask you?”

Zach blinks at him over his glass, his fork already abandoned. “If they ask me what, baby?”

“That ‘who are you dating’ bullshit. What are you gonna say?”

Zach shakes his head, slips on a world-weary smile. “Don’t worry about it. They never do.”

 

____________________

 

It’s annoying and kind of funny, the backbends Chris has to do to stay on the right side of straight, to keep his image propped up in the shape Zach thinks it should be in. 

No, that isn’t fair. It isn’t Zach’s doing. He gets that. It's the business.

He’s never thought of himself as ambitious in the Hollywood sense. Yeah, it’s nice to get noticed and get to do interesting work, but this was never supposed to be his career. He’d always seen himself in darkrooms and writer’s retreats in the woods, making art by himself, more or less. That’s the thing about a photograph or a poem: it’s up to you to shape it, to winnow the corners down and use color and simile and light until it speaks to you, sings, lets you know that it’s finished, whether you want it to be or not. Art is a two-handed process bearing only his fingerprints—or it had been, before acting.

But now, there’s so much about his life, his art, that he can’t control. The chances he takes, the movies he makes, they’re in service of somebody else’s vision, someone else’s product, and he gets that; really, he does.

So he follows the plan.

And at first, it’s easy, because Zach is right: the reporters ask Chris some version of said question constantly. It doesn’t hurt that they’re together in the endless days of interviews, either, that Zach is there to wave him away from that particular part of the truth.

“No,” Chris says, easy, on hour one of day one, “I’m not seeing anyone. Are you, Zach?”

“Haven’t found that someone yet,” he says on day two, hour four, giving the reporter a conspiratorial smile. “Why? Do you have somebody in mind?”

“Well,” he says in hour twelve of day six, “not at the moment. But hope springs eternal, right? That special person’s out there somewhere. That’s what all the songs say, isn’t it?”

“You’re a schmoopy bastard,” Zach hisses in the two-minute break between interviews, when their PR minder slips out for more almonds and water. “And if you start singing ‘I Wanna Dance With Somebody’ or some shit, Christopher, so help me, I’ll—”

Chris shuts him up with what’s supposed to be drive-by kiss that Zach turns into a car crash with teeth and some serious tongue and they barely break apart in time, barely get a breath in before the next reporter rolls in, camera dude at the ready.

They don’t risk that again.

And Zach’s right about this, too: the reporters never throw the question at him.

Chris isn’t sure what to make of that.

Well, yeah. He is. He just doesn’t like it.

But every damn day, it gets harder, not telling the truth.

By day eight, he isn’t sure what country they’re in, much less what city, and the kinks in his neck from sitting in uncomfortable chairs and on airplanes and sleeping in hotel beds that aren’t quite the right soft, those kinks are practically raising families, some second-generation type shit. So it’s not his fault when he misunderstands the question, when a change-up in the standard wording throws his poor, addled brain off its base.

“So,” the reporter says, a pretty redhead with an Italian accent, “are you dating?”

“Honestly,” Zach says, the morning after Chris’ unforced error, “this isn’t that difficult.”

Chris comes a half step from beaning Zach with his toast. “It _is_ ,” he says. “I don’t like lying about shit like this, stuff that matters. It sucks.”

They’re in Chris’ hotel room in London, crowded around a tiny bistro table. Outside, the skyline is heavy, the clouds hung low with the promise of snow. Inside, there’s orange juice and bacon and Zach’s beloved raspberry scones, one of which he sets aside with a sigh.

“There’s no need for dramatics.”

“It’s not dramatics,” Chris says. “I’m fucking pissed. I mean, if you were Zoe, it’d be fine, right? We’d be telling everybody and their brother how we care about each other, that we’re happy, and—”

“But I’m not Zoe,” Zach says, "and I resent the implication that I’m the one who’s making this not ‘fine.’”

“You want me to say I’m not mad at you, I’m pissed at the heteronormative paradigm?”

Zach sets down his tea and spreads his hands like a shaman. “That’d be a start.”

“Come on,” Chris says. “It’s not like we’re being James Bond about this. We sleep in each other’s rooms, for god’s sake—”

“Technically, they’re adjoining suites.”

“We travel together—”

“As part of a group.”

“We always sit next to each other on planes.”

“We’re preparing for interviews.”

“We’re also not invisible. You get that, right? I mean, if Karl could see it, then I’m guessing it’s not exactly a secret.”

Zach presses his lips together. “Our friends knowing is one thing. Studio execs are another.”

Chris chucks his fork at the table. “For fuck’s sake!" he barks. "It’s my career that you’re so goddamn concerned about, right? So this is my choice to make. And if I decide to go out on the red carpet tonight and announce to Queen and Country and YouTube that we’re dating and, oh, by the way, I’m in love with you and fuck anybody who so much as blinks at that, well, that’s my choice, Zachary.”

A pause. “Are you finished?”

“For now.”

“Well then,” Zach says, folding his napkin into four perfect corners. “I’ll just say this: I’m not worth it.”

“What?”

“All this casual career suicide—or all right, fine, let’s say career serious maiming—that you’re contemplating like some lovesick teenager: you’re not pulling this shit in my name.”

Chris stares at him. “What the fuck does that mean?”

“It means, Christopher, that being with me isn't worth it, this grand romantic truth telling gesture you seemed so determined to make. So don’t you fucking come out on some limey red carpet just because you think you love me. Because I’m not worth the collateral damage it’s going to cause, and if you’re too thickheaded to see it, fine. But I’m not.”

“Jesus christ, Zach. Now who’s being dramatic.”

“Fuck you,” Zach says, icy, shoving back from the table. “Have a nice day.”

He storms through the adjoining door and slams it. Chris can hear the lock catch.

“Yeah, well,” he says to the bitter dregs of his coffee. “Fuck you, too.”

They don’t speak the rest of the day, because what the fuck is there to say?

Chris keeps his mouth shut on the red carpet and he feels like a dick, like a sanctimonious heel with no spine. He takes refuge in the role of Chris Pine: wears his smile, his bashful charm, and doesn’t say what he’s really thinking.

It’s not easy.

In the theater, he puts John and Karl between he and Zach, which earns him an eyebrow and an elbow in the ribs from Karl, Kiwi for: _What the fuck_? Chris ignores him, ignores everybody, zones out during the movie and moves through the swanky premiere party after like he’s a zombie who’s seen better days.

He ducks out as soon as he can—they have an early call, he and Zach, one last interview, the period at the end of this hellishly long sentence—and falls into bed. Remembers how much he hates sleeping alone.

 

____________________

 

When it comes, the five AM call is a relief. 

One more day, he thinks as he’s shaving, as he zooms the toothbrush over his teeth. One more day of this bullshit and he can go home, back to LA. When he’s home, back in his own space, he’ll let himself feel, let the sadness and confusion and fury run around in his head, but for now, he’ll keep that shit in check. London’s not the best place for a breakdown.

He feels numb, and all things considered, that’s probably a good thing. The best he’s going to get.

The car ride to the studio is awful.

They’re in the back seat, alone. Shandy, their PR minder, is down for the count, hungover fierce, so they’re winging it today. God knows they’ve done it enough, had enough paint-by-numbers chats to know what questions to expect, how the studio would like them to respond.

Chris makes a face behind his latte, frowns at his reflection in the window. He looks like he didn’t sleep, like he’s got a ghost of a hangover, like his heart’s in several pieces way down in his gut. Yeah, A+ on target.

Zach is curled into the door opposite, hiding behind sunglasses even though the moon is still out, the sun an afterthought in the dull morning sky.

The streets are narrow and quiet, the great city not quite awake. It’s probably beautiful, but Chris isn’t in the mood to appreciate it.

He wants to touch Zach. He wants to slide over and put his arms around Zach’s neck, lean his face against Zach’s throat and just breathe in the scent of him, like he had that first time. He wants Zach to reach for him, to stretch out a hand without looking and know that Chris will take it, because he will, he always will. He wants to kiss Zach and make him know that he’s loved and that he’s worth it, a thousand times over. Why doesn’t he know that? Zach’s worth a lifetime of parts.

And yet, he doesn’t say anything.

The studio looks like every morning show set Chris has ever seen, ever been forced to set foot on: tailored armchairs for the hosts—Simon and Joanna—a low, creamy couch for the guests, and a glass coffee table holding up mugs plastered with the show’s sunny logo. There’s tea in Zach’s and straight up black coffee in his and he sips it as they wait for the signal, does his best not to smear his lipstick.

He feels like a freak in TV makeup, always has, but Zach makes it look effortless. The color sits on his skin like it belongs there; he looks like himself with the brightness turned all the way up, seated elegantly on Chris’ right. It’s amazing.

He gets lost in it, how lovely this man is. For a moment, he forgets to be sad, forgets that they’re fighting.

“Hey,” Chris murmurs, mouth hidden behind his mug. “Zach.”

“What?” Zach says without turning.

“You’re fucking beautiful.”

“Ten seconds, gents,” the producer says.

Zach’s head jerks around and he stares at Chris, a frown tight between his eyes.

“You are,” Chris whispers. “I want you to know that."

Zach shakes his head, imperceptible, the message loud and clear: _No. No. Not here._

Chris grins at him, because fuck this shit, he can if he wants to. Mouths: “It's true."

“Good morning!” Joanna says, in a clipped, chipper voice that rings across the soundstage, the camera’s light blinking red. “Are you awake out there, Britain? It’s a lovely Friday, isn’t it?”

“Ah,” Simon says, all fake jocularity, “lovely that it’s Friday, you mean, lamb, because today’s forecast is still a bit on the damp side, I fear.”

It’s the strangest damn thing, sitting there on live television, the crew and the cameras and the viewers focused on the hosts while Chris is zoomed in on Zach, on the curve of his lips, on the strange thing in his eyes that’s only strange because he’s never seen it in the daylight before, not like this. Not where other people could see.

Zach shifts, puts his face where it should be, turned to the camera, to the lights, but—

But his hand finds Chris’ on the cream-colored cushion, his fingers sneaking home and holding tight where Queen and Country and everybody with a TV can see and the breath Chris has been holding since his trailer, since _Trek_ , since he saw Zach on his doorstep in LA, since he woke up yesterday with his head on Zach’s chest and Zach’s hand in his hair, sweeping, he lets that shit go and holds on right back.

 _I love you_ , he thinks, fierce, his smile going loose and floppy. _You’re goddamn right I do_.

They do the whole segment that way, their hands intertwined, and the hosts don’t bat a goddamn eye.

Well, Joanna does, but at least she doesn’t ask if they’re dating.

When their bit is over, Simon bustles off but Joanna lingers, gives them a long, solid look. “Nice work on the picture, lads,” she says. “I enjoyed it. You two together, that was the best part. Your scenes, I mean.”

“Thank you,” they say, an appreciative chorus.

“That guy had no idea who we were, did he?” Chris says, sagging back on the couch as the crew around them starts to scatter, following Joanna to a different part of the set. “You think he’s ever heard of _Star Trek_?”

Zach pulls Chris’ hand up and kisses his wrist, lets him go, lets the fight all fall out of him. “He knew only what was on the cards, dear,” he says. “And that’s fine. He’s here to do a job, just like us."

Chris laughs, his eyes suddenly heavy, his body remembering how beat he is, how soon he’ll get to sleep in his own bed again. “Oh, is that all.”

There’s a sharpness in Zach’s face then, a want, and his eyes sink to Chris’ mouth, and oh shit, Chris knows what’s coming. He does.

“Are you sure?” Zach says.

It’s a bigger question than Chris can handle right now, but it’s also exactly the right one.

“Yeah,” Chris says, tipping his face up, reaching for Zachary’s own. “I am.”

Somewhere, their PR people are having kittens, no doubt. God knows what the studio dudes are going to say. And, ah, Chris thinks vague, stroking Zach’s cheek, poor JJ. He won’t know what hit him. But for now, it’s good, Zach leaning into him, his heart doing cartwheels beneath Chris’ palm, chuckling as he nips at Chris’ lip. It’s better, walking off the set, out of the studio, onto the sidewalk with their arms around each other. It feels like them.

“So, Mr. Quinto,” Chris says in the car, around a big stupid grin, “are you seeing anyone?”

“Eh,” Zach says from behind his sunglasses, his fingers warm on Chris’ knee, a sketched, open smile. “Nobody you’ve heard of.”


End file.
